:sl:
Here's an updated version of something I originally wrote for the 2010 Writing Contest. Comments and constructive criticism are most welcome.
Silhouette
My imaginary friend won’t talk to me. He just sits there. Doesn’t look at me, doesn’t listen when I say hello. When I mention Sara. When I joke or shout or tell him to jump out of the window.
Sometimes he tells
me to jump out of the window. That can’t be healthy.
But it’s weird. He sits in my flat, at my desk, reading my mail, as if he’s actually there, not just a figment of my imagination. You never get used to it. You just start to wonder why a product of your subconscious isn’t easier to live with.
He shifts at the desk. Maybe he’ll talk to me. Most likely he won’t. I guess he’ll dump the mail on the desk, grab the notepad and flop onto the bed. He does almost exactly that -- leans against the wall, glances at the notepad in his left hand then out of the rain-streaked window on his right.
I know who he’s thinking about. She was my gift to him. He calls her Leila. And she won’t talk to him.
Huh. What a depressingly poetic place my subconscious is. I’d laugh if it didn’t mean I was losing my mind.
Back to work. I look at the library book in my lap. I can’t read it anymore, not really. I’ve had enough of Jungian archetypes and the mass unconscious, anima, animus and how everything relates to the theories of Sigmund Freud. It’s all very fascinating but the best explanation it offers is that Adam is a manifestation of my Shadow. And that just can’t be.
Your Shadow is your opposite, your negative, all the anxieties about yourself and your relations with others, a spectre at every crossroads, a nightmare mist on the edge of your dreams.
That ain’t Adam. I created him when I was five, for crying out loud. We grew up together. Had the same friends, with whom I’d now be partying if his recent antics hadn’t scared them away. And those antics - what to the others must have looked like chairs or cups or plates moving themselves - prove that Adam is more than my dark side. He’s
of me but
isn’t me.
Bloody hell.
I spin the book onto the pile beside me and slump against the wall. Somewhere among the stack of texts is an explanation. It’s bookmarked and highlighted and I don’t want to read it right now, because across the room, Adam is no longer gazing out of the window. He’s begun to write.
“Dearest Leila,” his letter will begin, and I will clench my fists and swallow the shout in my throat because once again my imaginary friend will expose my wrongs by showing me how to do it right. As if I can’t work things out myself.
Because I can’t work things out myself.
That window Adam’s standing beside looks big enough for the both of us. Just slide it open and dive four storeys to kiss the dirt. No more tension or stress or disappointment on Sara’s face. Hell, no more Sara’s face.
Ah, screw this self-pity crap. I pull out my phone and text her to come over. She will, despite the rain and her nagging to get my life in order. She’ll know the fact I called means I want to show her I’m sorting things out. It won’t be a pantomime. I’ll solve this problem at its root.
Across the room, Adam scribbles on the notepad. Grimaces. Tears out the page, crushes it into a ball and hurls it at the bin. His frustration is delicious. Mr I-Am-All-You’ll-Never-Be with his face in his hands and his back to the wall. Outstanding.
Fingers parting like he’s playing peek-a-boo, his hands drop to his sides and he stares at me. No fire in his eyes. No words.
So I say one. “Hi.”
And that fire’s back, fuelled by the muscles that set his jaw as he yanks out his phone and begins to text. “Shut up, Danyal.”
That’s the first thing he’s said to me all week, and he spoke while asking his partner to visit, like my very own visual echo. Who needs mirrors?
What I need is for him to disappear, which he won’t, not while he’s on his pretend phone to his pretend woman. And she’ll visit and they’ll argue until she leaves. I’ll have to sleep on the floor because my bed will be stubbornly occupied by my imaginary friend.
That word. Imaginary. Maybe it’s not entirely accurate anymore. Not after that book. Easy to locate it in the stack. Don’t even need the bookmark to find the page, whose ink-bracketed paragraphs contain highlighted words. Tibet. David-Neel. Thought-forms.
Tulpa.
That word slithers through my guts. In the past I would have called it hokum. Some European explorer stumbles upon a bunch of Tibetan monks who teach her how to conjure up a real person with the power of thought alone? Clearly fictitious. Obviously true.
Across the room Adam is smiling. He nods at the book. “That thing will give you nightmares.” He laughs.
I wonder what else he’s read. It’s disturbing enough that he’s sufficiently independent to figure out this paranormal stuff. I want to wish him away, but I’m making him real.
He stands and looks out of the window. “Leila is on her way, Danyal.” He looks at me. “So behave yourself.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh, “Ha” after bitter “Ha”. This sort of thing used to amuse, like a dog rolling over for its master. Now the dog’s forgetting its place, and it’s just getting old. I tell him so.
He smiles again, turns away. “See, I disagree.” His hands fold behind him. “I don’t think I give you
enough grief.” He looks down his nose at me. “You know what’s really getting old?” He shakes his head and pivots to face me, arms outstretched. “This.”
“This?”
Mad light dances in his eyes. “This whole arrangement. Like we’re flatmates or something.”
“Aren’t we?” It comes out slightly more facetious than I intended.
Adam just closes his eyes and leans against the wall. “I’m trying to think of a polite word for ‘parasite’.”
I can’t resist that set-up. “I think ‘Adam’ is a pretty good one.”
He laughs and it’s almost like the old days of friendly banter and bonding so imaginary it seemed real. But there’s something about the sound of his chuckles and the shake of his shoulders as he quietens, still grinning. “Well.” He looks at the floor. “There we are.” His expression hardens. “You’re operating under a faulty assumption, Danyal.”
I know where he’s going with this. “You think you’re real. That you have a soul, and that you’re not imaginary anymore.”
Adam scoffs. “Anymore?” He paces before the window, a shadow against a rain-specked rectangle of grey. “Okay, let’s find out how things look from your perspective. Why don’t you like me? What set things off?”
Doesn’t sound like he’s playing games, so I tell the truth. “Your poltergeist routine scared away my friends.”
“What friends?”
What the hell is this? “My real friends. Not imaginary. You scared away my actual, physical friends.”
A strange little smile curls his lips. “Name them.”
Okay, now he’s playing games. “I’m not in the mood for this nonsense.”
“So you don’t know their names.”
“They’re
real.”
“I never said they weren’t.” That smile stretches. He walks to the desk, and for some reason I want to punch his non-existent face. “What was I reading here, Danyal?”
He’s in one of his moods. “Post.
My post. Bills, statements. Things like that.”
Adam grins. “How often do you read them?”
His tone implies I never do, and anger fizzles a chuckle between my lips. “Whenever you give me a chance.”
He picks an envelope off the desk. “Have you ever seen Leila?”
He’s gone from bills to her? “I didn’t know she was so high-maintenance, Adam.”
He is emotionless. “Answer the question.”
This is what I have to live with. “Of course I’ve seen her. All the time.” Now to stick in the knife and end this retardation. “I invented her.”
Adam turns the envelope over in his hands. “You invented her. To make me happy, right? An imaginary woman for your lonely imaginary friend, that’s what you think?”
“That’s what I
know.” It’s self-evident. Now that he finally sees it, maybe we can all move forward. “Does this mean things are changing, Adam? That you’ll stop following me everywhere I go and live happily ever after with Leila in your newfound independence?”
He scoops two more envelopes off the desk. “Why have I never seen Sara?”
I thought I’d welcome Adam acknowledging her existence, but not like this, with stupid, incessant, childish questions. “You’ve never had the pleasure of meeting her.”
“Why not? You said I follow you everywhere.” His words are like machine-gun fire. “Even to the bathroom, which reminds me, why do you never look in the mirror?”
Enough. “What’s this about?”
That strange, infuriating smile creases his face and he fans the envelopes in his hand like playing cards. “Pick a letter, any letter.”
I snatch them off him. Dunno what’s so special about these, bog-standard first-class stamp, my address on each one, my name--
No.
Oh, God. Ice spirals my ribs as I flip through each envelope, rush to the desk and scan the documents on its surface. Bills, balances and job rejections all linked by one name.
Adam’s.
“I’m not your imaginary friend, Danyal.” He sounds almost sorry. “You’re mine.”
This is ridiculous. Ilogical. A bad dream. “Why haven’t I seen these letters before?”
He breathes a chuckle, bites his lower lip. “You never read the post.” He stifles a laugh at the absurdity.
I want to strangle him. “I don’t have time for your pranks.”
“No pranks.” For a moment, his eyes lose their sheen of arrogance. “Only truth.”
Sure. “Sara will be here soon.” Implicit in my voice is the message, “So stop lying.”
He doesn’t seem to make the inference. “Think about it, Danyal. You can’t name a single one of the friends you claimed I scared off.” He shakes his head. “I would have accepted Steve, Asif or Inderjit as answers.”
“Because you just made them up.”
“They’re my friends, Danyal.
You scared them off because I can see you and they can’t, and you think you’re real.”
“I am real.” Of course I am. I’m solid, tangible as this room, the window, the rain streaking from sky to car park. All of which are prettier sights than Adam’s patronising little face. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t even remember that event.”
“But you remembered it from my point of view, as if you were me.”
“Maybe I am you.” Stick that in your existential pipe and smoke it.
His responding laughter is in rhythm with the patter of rain against the window. “No, Danyal. Strange as it sounds, you just share some of my memories. Vaguely, imperfectly. Makes sense, really. Helps you to catch up. I don’t think you had many memories of your own when I finally willed you to life.”
I turn to face him. “Willed me to life? You’re saying all these years I’ve been a figment of your imagination until the power of your belief gave me a life of my own?” I hope he felt the venom in those words. “That I’m your Tulpa, like in that book? That’s what you think?”
He tilts his head. “As you would say, that’s what I
know.”
I’d rather look at the car park than his smirk. “If I’m such a problem, just wish me away.”
“I don’t think I can. I think I could only have done that when we both knew you didn’t exist, but now? You think therefore you are and all that. You’re independent of me.”
I don’t know why that’s so annoying. Maybe it’s the superiority lacing his statements. Two can play at that game. “They destroyed the Tulpa in the book.”
“Through months of intense meditation.” His voice tells me he’s nodding. “But I’m no Tibetan monk. I brought you to life slowly. It took years. I wasn’t even conscious of the process.”
“You were such a lonely saddo that your subconscious had to step in?”
He’s looking at his hands. “I had friends, Danyal. Good friends. And Leila.”
Should I get a violin? “Any difficulties with her are your own fault, not mine.” I look out the window. Sara should be here soon. “How could it be my fault? We both know I’d make a better you than you.”
“We’re nothing alike. You’re everything I never want to be.”
I wish he’d shouted those words. They’d have hurt less. “Subtract me, Adam, and all that’s left is you.”
“Me and Leila.”
Well, bully for him. I don’t care what he thinks I am. I won’t be alone either. “I’ll have Sara.”
“You don’t even have a reflection yet.”
I glare at
his reflection in the window. Where mine should be there is only rain. I could adjust my position to better see myself, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. Besides, that woman drawing closer from the end of the car park, umbrella in hands, looks familiar. “You wanted to meet her, Adam. Now’s your chance.”
His reflection passes a hand over its face. “I won’t be able to see her, Danyal.”
I beg to differ. In a few moments she’ll be so close even he won’t be able to deny her existence.
“This is sad.” Adam’s voice loses its edge of condescension. His reflection looks at the floor. “I didn’t think it could get this far.”
Below, Sara stops, rain lashing against her umbrella. She looks up at me and waves. “Come and see, Adam.”
His reflection doesn’t move. “There’s nothing to see.”
Honest to God. “She’s right there.”
“No.” He shakes his head and points at mine. “She’s in there.”
I laugh in his face. This is getting insane.
He doesn’t seem to think so. He looks like somebody died. “I won’t be able to see Sara because she’s your imaginary friend.”
My response is to grab him and lead him to the window, to seize his skull and turn him to face her. He can’t deny she exists. He’s not blind. She’s right there, still waving, twirling her umbrella against multiple curtains of rain and wind that threatens her balance, but she’s definitely there, that’s why she’s waving, who cares if she’s getting soaked, all she needs to do and all she is doing is lowering the umbrella to angle it against the wind that splashes water against the fabric, and I can’t see her right now because of the way she’s holding the umbrella, but she’s there, she definitely exists, how could she
not?
And the wind roars and blows the umbrella inside-out and it spins and rolls across the ground.
And Sara is not there. She must have gone elsewhere, to shelter, at the north of the car-park, or the east.
“I’m sorry.” Adam sounds like he sees the panic on my face.
And I’m not panicking, why would I, just because I can’t see her doesn’t mean she’s not there, has never been there, will never be there, and--
The umbrella stops rolling and rain pelts its broken spokes.
And Sara is gone. Was never there. I just couldn’t see it. The man who helped me realise lowers his head beside me. He created me and nurtured me and taught me the truth. He planted the seeds which grew in the rain that washed Sara away.
Maybe I should thank him. All I can say is, “You murdered her.”
And before he can respond I’ve shoved him into the desk. He crumples to the floor, where I launch a kick that splits his lip. I drag him to his feet, against the wall.
“I’m sorry, Danyal.”
No negotiation. “You made me doubt her. You destroyed my chance to make her real.”
He tries to sputter something else but I silence him with my fist. How could he do this? How dare he? If he hadn’t triggered my disbelief, if he’d left me alone, Sara would still exist, at least for me. Maybe she’d eventually become real through my belief, be my Tulpa as I was Adam’s.
Adam can’t say anything other than “Sorry” and “I’m sorry”, over and over, and it changes nothing. He’s ruined my life and ended hers. I throw him across the room. He hits the bed and spins into the stack of books. It’s almost comical. Look at him, rising zombie-like from the pile. An uppercut flops him onto his side. His face is raw meat. Good look for the weak, pathetic little man. I roll him toward the window, glimpsing a reflection that isn’t his.
Maybe it’s mine. Maybe onlookers won’t think Adam is being beaten to a pulp by thin air. Maybe I’m entirely real now. Huh. “On your feet. I’m tired of carrying you.”
He lurches to his feet. Doesn’t even throw a punch. “If I die, Danyal, so do you.”
Does he think I’m an idiot? “You were the one who said I’m independent. Think about it.” I slide the window open and yank him before it. The wind sprays rain into my face and I’ve never felt so alive.
“Leila!” His voice is desperate. I clamp my hand over his mouth and look out of the window. It
is her, walking across the car park, pausing where Sara paused, adjusting her hood and stepping on the umbrella. She looks at it, head cocked, and despite the rain and the wind, she turns and takes it to the nearest bin. Just like Sara would.
I smile at Adam. “Things are starting to make sense.” Lean his head out of the window. “Why should I settle for imaginary when I can have the real thing?” He struggles and I hook his hands behind him with my free arm. He knows I’m right. “I’m everything you didn’t have the nerve to be, Adam.” Leila will understand, even as I push Adam’s shoulders through the window.
I’ll be a change, but one she’ll warm to. No need to rationalise her existence and replace her with a fantasy. Adam’s memories will help us get along, vague as they are. Eventually I’ll make my own. Can’t wipe her memories of Adam, but all she’ll remember is weakness. Even if she does wonder what happened to him, she hasn’t seen me and deep down she won’t really care.
Maybe she’ll think he jumped.